Nocturnal Emissions Read Online Free PDF Page B

that marked the small farm’s border. First looking up and down the road, Venn moved closer to the fence and reached over it to pet the fleecy side of a ram, which went on chewing placidly the clover that was sowed for these beasts to feed on. But it wasn’t to stroke the animal that Venn had left the road. He scru-tinized the ram grimly through his red spectacles. Then, its comrades, a bit further beyond. He saw no fiery eyes gazing out of their heads, or any other part of them. They ignored the jar he carried as much as they ignored him.
    For the moment satisfied that Brook had raised no further demons on his farm, Venn continued on. He saw the shearing barn, pens with high hurdles, and in the background, the farm owner’s stone cottage itself, with two storeys and a roof of thatch. This was his destination, specifically.
    Though this Mr. Brook had recently become deceased, it became apparent that his widow had managed to keep his farm in operation. Venn saw two men working about the property, and an energetic little sheep dog began barking at Venn’s approach until one of the men, who leaned on his crook, gave the mon-grel a command to desist. Venn lifted a hand to the man as he continued on to the cottage, and found that the dog had aroused the curiosity of a woman who now stood on the threshold to greet him.
    “May I help you, Father?” the woman asked. Judging from her stained pinafore and the slight dishevelment of her bundled dark hair, Venn took the pretty young woman to be another of the laborers.
    “Good afternoon. Might I have a word with Mrs. Brook?”
    “I am Mrs. Brook, Father.” She self-consciously brushed a curled twist of hair off her eyebrow.
    “Ahh, I see.” He smiled apologetically. “I am terribly sorry to appear here unannounced, but I was hoping to ask you several questions about your late husband…if it is not too much for you to bear.”
    “It is not too much,” the widow said, though looking a bit confused or perhaps even wary. Venn noticed that her eyes were repeatedly falling to the bundle he carried, which a few minutes earlier he had again wrapped up in his greatcoat. “Please come inside.”
    The widow seated the priest for tea, and when she reappeared had thrown on a clean white apron. She again flicked aside a stray tangle of hair as she seated herself nervously opposite him. Venn watched her face as she poured for him.
    She was exceptionally lovely, with skin very pale for a farm owner, large eyes so dark as to almost be black, a small pursed mouth as intently composed as her brows were drawn. To mar her beauty, there was a deeply indented scar along the delicate edge of her jaw, which he noticed as shadow slipped in to define it, as if someone had tried to cut the artery in her neck and missed. When she sat back to meet his eyes again, he lifted his gaze from the old wound quickly.
    “Did your husband own this farm, then, Mrs. Brook?” Venn asked.
    “No, Father…it is under our lease. There is a dealer in sheep who has stocked us, and with whom we share our profits until such time as we can fully reimburse him.”
    “And you have continued on with the operation, even after the sad demise of your husband? It is to your credit.”
    “Thank you, Father.” A pale but still pretty smile.
    Venn sighed uneasily, and shifted in his seat. “I need to show you something rather unpleasant, Mrs. Brook, if I may,” he said, indicating the bundle he had set on the floor beside him.
    Uncertainly, the woman assented. He saw her swallow. He hoped that her nerves were not too tender to be viewing such a horror, so soon after her young husband’s shocking demise. (And Venn had surreptitiously been glancing about him for signs of charring on the floor and walls, thinking that this might have been the very room where the man had been burned to death—but he saw nothing unusual, and remembered how the vicar had told him the fire had been unnaturally concentrated on Brook himself.) Venn